Dead Planets Don’t Bite - Chapter 1: The Whispers of Gluttar-5

READ CHAPTER 1 HERE Chapter 1: The Whispers of Gluttar-5

READ CHAPTER 2 HERE Chapter 2: The Planet That Hates Tourists

READ CHAPTER 3 HERE Chapter 3: The Silent Scream

READ CHAPTER 4 HERE Chapter 4: The Burp That Saved the Galaxy

"I swear, if one more rock tries to crawl into my boot, I'm setting this planet on fire," Cole grumbled as the ground giggled beneath him.

A mysterious message leads treasure hunter Cole Baxter to a dead planet called Gluttar-5, rumored to be haunted. Turns out, the planet is alive—and very cranky.

Dust billowed all around Cole Baxter like civilization's disgruntled ghosts. He scrambled over a crumbling obsidian altar, for his trusty as well as slightly dented laser whip crackled harmlessly against a booby-trapped pressure plate which had, thankfully, already been sprung by some less-fortunate adventurer (probably a Kevin). Cole sighed since he was holding a small, sophisticatedly carved… he wasn't completely sure what it was, though it seemed ancient and somewhat precious. This temple did hold yet another trinket. Maybe the trinket would fetch enough credits for a decent space-burrito and a recharge for his perpetually temperamental hoverboots.

Cole Baxter: interstellar treasure hunter, famed for locating fairly unique relics through strange skill and for dodging demise mostly unscathed through stranger skill. His reputation lacked true galactic scope since it tended toward some dark bars at the edge and some very excited old artifact sellers. However, the thrill was in fact the real treasure. It was just that electric jolt of discovery. Do near-death experiences exist? Just a spicy bonus.

His wrist-mounted comm crackled to life, also it interrupted his self-pity party. Static did hiss, as it was followed by a garbled mess consisting of clicks and whistles. A faint and almost melodic whisper then did arise. It sounded like… language. Ancient language. A linguistic sampler can feel as if a cosmic toddler has gotten hold of them all jumbled. Cole, curious, tuned out the sound struggling with the dials. The whisper solidified, repeating a strange, rhythmic sequence intertwined with what sounded like a distress beacon from a system labeled on his ancient star charts as the long-deceased Gluttar-5. Dead planets, Cole knew, were usually boring. And boring was bad for business. Unless… unless they held secrets. Secrets that sang.

Back on his ship, the Stardust Drifter (a vessel held together more by optimism and duct tape than actual structural integrity), Cole leaned back in his pilot seat, the mysterious message echoing in his head. Time to assemble the dream team. Or, you know, the only team he could afford and who hadn't filed restraining orders against him.

His first call went to Becca Ford. He found her in the dimly lit archives of the Intergalactic Historical Society, surrounded by stacks of data-slates and holographic linguistic databases that threatened to topple at the slightest sneeze. Becca, a brilliant but endearingly awkward linguist, had the uncanny ability to decipher languages that had been dead for millennia, often muttering to herself in tongues that would make a space slug blush.

"Becca, darling of decryption!" Cole's voice boomed through her personal comm.

Becca jumped, nearly sending a precarious tower of ancient Sumerian space poetry crashing down. "Cole! Please! My auditory sensors are still recovering from that… incident on Xylos."

Ah, yes. Xylos. The planet with the sentient, carnivorous moss. Good times. "Right, right. Sorry. Listen, I've got a new lead. Something… singing. On Gluttar-5."

Becca’s eyes, usually magnified by thick-rimmed glasses, widened slightly. "Gluttar-5? The spectral whispers planet? I thought that was just space-folk lore." A nervous tic flickered in her left eyelid. The name Gluttar-5 had always given her the creeps.

"Maybe. Maybe not. The message… it's complex. Layers of extinct dialects. You're the only one who can unravel it, Becca." Cole laid on the charm, thick as space-peanut butter. "Think of the linguistic possibilities! The fame! The… moderately sized reward!"

A hesitant "Hmm" was her only reply. The lure of a linguistic puzzle, especially one shrouded in mystery, was a powerful one for Becca. Plus, her current assignment – cataloging the mating calls of the Grobnar swamp slugs – wasn't exactly setting her pulse racing. "Alright, Cole. Send me the data. But if this leads to another encounter with sentient flora, I'm filing for hazard pay… and a therapist."

Next up: Rongo. The Stardust Drifter's chef. Rongo was a Saurian from the humid swamps of Xantus Prime. His scales shimmered with iridescent greens and blues, and his perpetually stoic expression rarely wavered. His culinary creations, however, were another story. They ranged from surprisingly palatable to things that defied earthly (and most extraterrestrial) description, often involving ingredients that still wriggled.

Cole found him in the galley, a bizarre assortment of bubbling concoctions emitting strange aromas. Today’s special seemed to involve luminescent fungi and something that looked suspiciously like a severed tentacle.

"Rongo, my scaly gourmand!" Cole announced his presence with his usual lack of subtlety.

Rongo turned, his vertical pupils narrowing slightly. A low, guttural rumble emanated from his throat, which Cole had learned was Rongo's equivalent of a polite greeting. "Baxter. You require sustenance?"

"Not exactly. I have a proposition. A job. Gluttar-5."

Rongo’s spatula, which was currently stirring a pot of something that glowed an unsettling shade of purple, paused. "Gluttar-5. Planet of… echoes?" His voice was deep and gravelly, each word sounding like rocks tumbling down a hill.

"That's the one. Rumors of an artifact. Possibly… delicious?" Cole added hopefully, knowing Rongo’s peculiar definition of delicious often involved rare and potentially dangerous ingredients.

Rongo considered this, his reptilian brain whirring. "Artifact… of power? Or… flavor?"

"Potentially both! Think of the culinary possibilities of a singing artifact!" Cole’s enthusiasm was boundless, even if his logic was a bit… Cole-like.

Another guttural rumble. "Acceptable. My culinary instincts… are intrigued." Plus, the Stardust Drifter's pantry was running dangerously low on glow-worms.

Finally, Eli Dean. The ship’s pilot and resident charmer. Eli could talk his way out of a black hole and somehow convince the event horizon to buy him a drink. He was currently at the Orbital Docking Bay 7, attempting to sweet-talk a traffic control officer out of a hefty parking fine for the Stardust Drifter.

"…and officer, my ship, she's a delicate flower. Needs her space, you see. Cramping her in those tight bays? It's like… like putting a nebula in a shoebox!" Eli’s voice, smooth as a freshly polished hyperdrive, oozed charm.

Cole’s comm beeped in his ear. "Eli! Drop the space-poetry and get your handsome posterior back to the ship. We've got a gig."

Eli sighed dramatically into his comm. "Duty calls, even when it interrupts my artistic negotiations. What's the scoop, Captain Calamity?"

"Gluttar-5. Singing artifact. Big payday, maybe."

There was a slight pause. "Gluttar-5? Isn't that place supposed to be spooky? Like, haunted by the whispers of dead space pirates and stuff?"

"Details, details! Think of the adventure, Eli! Besides," Cole added with a wink that Eli couldn't see, "Becca's coming too."

A beat of silence. Then, a slightly more enthusiastic, "Alright, alright. Consider me your pilot. Though, Baxter, if any spectral space pirates try to borrow my wrench, you're dealing with them."

The journey to Gluttar-5 was… eventful. Rongo’s experimental cuisine resulted in a ship-wide bout of mild hallucinations (Cole swore he saw the navigation system doing the tango). A near-miss with a grumpy space slug the size of a small moon required some fancy flying from Eli and a lot of panicked yelling from Cole. And then there was the simmering tension between Becca and Eli.

The "incident," as Becca referred to it, had occurred during a zero-G spacewalk to repair a faulty comms array on a previous, thankfully less bizarre, mission. A sudden jolt had sent them tumbling, and in the weightless chaos, their lips had… connected. It had been brief, accidental, and utterly mortifying for Becca, who now reacted to Eli’s presence with a mixture of awkward stutters and fervent focus on her data-slates. Eli, on the other hand, seemed either blissfully unaware of Becca’s discomfort or was enjoying it immensely, peppering his interactions with her with casual, teasing remarks.

"Careful there, Becca," he’d say, as they navigated a particularly bumpy asteroid field, "don't want to go flying into my arms again."

Becca would just glare at him over her glasses and bury herself deeper in her linguistic analysis. Cole, oblivious as usual, would occasionally chime in with his own brand of romantic wisdom. "You know, kids, a little accidental smooching never hurt anyone. Builds character. Or at least, awkwardness. Which can be character-building too, in a roundabout way."

Finally, after what felt like an eternity of questionable food and romantic tension thicker than a neutron star, Gluttar-5 loomed into view. It was a desolate, rocky sphere, its surface scarred and barren. No visible atmosphere, no signs of life. Just… silence.

As the Stardust Drifter descended, however, subtle anomalies began to register on the ship’s sensors. Gravitational readings flickered erratically. Strange mineral formations on the surface seemed to shimmer and… twitch. And beneath the silence, a faint, almost imperceptible rumbling vibrated through the hull.

"Sensors are picking up some weird readings," Eli reported, his usual easygoing demeanor replaced by a hint of unease. "Gravitational fluctuations are all over the place. And there's some kind of low-frequency vibration… almost like a heartbeat."

Cole, initially buzzing with excitement at the prospect of a singing artifact, felt a prickle of unease. This wasn't the silent, dead planet the legends described. "Becca, what do your readings say?"

Becca, her brow furrowed in concentration, stared at her data-slate. "The residual energy signatures… they're complex. Layered, like the message. And… they're not static. They're… evolving. Almost like… a language. A very, very deep and slow language."

They landed the Stardust Drifter on a relatively flat, rocky plain. The silence was heavy, broken only by the hiss of the ship's cooling systems. As they disembarked, the ground felt strangely… solid, yet somehow yielding, like walking on petrified muscle.

They began to set up a rudimentary camp, deploying their environmental dome and laying out their equipment. Suddenly, the ground beneath their feet began to ripple. A low groan, like a planet clearing its throat after a millennia-long nap, echoed across the desolate landscape. A section of the rocky surface directly in front of them began to undulate, the earth cracking and shifting. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, a massive, rocky "eye" – a colossal formation of stone and shimmering minerals – opened in the ground, its gaze fixed directly on the bewildered crew.

A deep, guttural groan, far louder and more resonant than before, rumbled through the air, shaking the very ground they stood on. The "dead" planet of Gluttar-5 was awake. And it looked… incredibly cranky.

READ CHAPTER 1 HERE Chapter 1: The Whispers of Gluttar-5

READ CHAPTER 2 HERE Chapter 2: The Planet That Hates Tourists

READ CHAPTER 3 HERE Chapter 3: The Silent Scream

READ CHAPTER 4 HERE Chapter 4: The Burp That Saved the Galaxy